The airline has ditched the previous paid access scheme, priced at $5 per hour, in favour of unshackling the service to make it free all travellers in the terminal.

There's already free wifi in all Qantas airport lounges, of course – and it's been a lot faster since January this year, when Optus took over the provision of lounge Internet services from Telstra and kicked the slow and unreliable connections up to a zippy 20Mbps.

The Red Roo is trumpeting the move as one of 91 Reasons To Fly With Us, although the remaining 90 "changes to the way we fly" don't bear too close an inspection.

For example, Qantas lounges are counted twice, as reasons #23 and #46 – as is the promise of 'more flights more often' (numbers 15 and 68).

The exact same description of mobile booking appears as both #2 and #85; and fast check-in (as afforded by Qantas Next-Generation Check-in system) is listed three times, as changes #18, #33 and #91.

And only a handful of the alleged 91 reasons to fly are actually new changes being introduced, as Qantas claims, so all up this is spin trumping susbtance.

But hey, free wifi throughout the Qantas terminals – we can get on board that boat!

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wow, another one your 'enhanced benefits'? anyone can offer free wi-fi, low cost backpakers joints around the world offer better. as usual, zero dollar value qantas.your scrapping the bottom all the time trying to entice what's left of the the idiot punters.

What is the problem with this? It's a great benefit for passengers, in particular those from overseas and especially those who can't access lounges. Would you rather them not offer this then? Maybe it is 'zero value' to you, but others will appreciate it immensley. It is certainly better value then paying the stupid prices some airports charge for internet access.

Yes, an 'enhancement', what used to cost $5 per hour is now free. What is your beef with this? It's like whatever Qantas does is wrong wrong wrong by some people. Yes it's overdue for any airport to charge for wireless Internet, especially these days when they want you to do so much online and when Internet is so vital for travel, but still the fact that Qantas is recognizing this has got to be good?

Over at USA Today last year, Harriett Baskas penned this piece looking at the shift towards 'free' wifi at airports but also with time limits on the free service, side by side with a paid service which offers higher bandwidth.

I recall one US airport operator - albeit from a smaller airport - rightly pointing out that there's no such thing as 'free' Internet because somebody has to pay for it, and in his case he simply felt that there was no fair way to pass costs on to everybody for the percentage of travellers who expected to use the Net for free. It's an interesting point of view!